


A Sharper Blade for a Deeper Cut

by Yergink



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: (kind of), Angst, Bug Imagery, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Intent to Murder, Mental Instability, Paranoia, the one where wilson contemplates revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25363039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yergink/pseuds/Yergink
Summary: Mere days after deciding to team up with Maxwell, Wilson grapples with trust, death, the shadows, and his own murderous intent.
Relationships: Maxwell & Wilson (Don't Starve)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 27





	A Sharper Blade for a Deeper Cut

**Author's Note:**

> Unapologetically, I wrote this because I watched Sweeney Todd with a friend and absolutely loved it. I had meant to work on the next chapter of Bravery and a Bowline (it's mostly done!) but I literally couldn't until I finished this.

One of the few truths Wilson has learned about the Constant is that it is never quiet. 

His campfire crackles at his feet, popping loudly as he steps back and forth around it. From somewhere beyond the radius of the light, he can hear something moving. An animal, possibly. Or a monster, more likely. Either way, the sound of it scratching at the earth, the scraping and breathing of it keep worming into his head, impossible to ignore. 

Beyond even that, there are the shadows, which are never quiet either, despite what convention would assume. They whisper lowly to him as the glow of the fire shrinks, and the murmurs make him shiver and itch, like there are ants crawling over his scalp. Hurriedly, he feeds a few twigs to the flames, urging them to rise. And even without a particular affinity for fire, the light soothes his nerves, if just a smidge. 

He paces the border of the firelight in a semicircle, back and forth, avoiding the opposite edge of the ring where his singular tent sits, currently occupied. No sound emerges from the tent, which is to be expected. In the few days Wilson has spent around him, he’s learned that Maxwell sleeps like the dead. A conclusion to whether or not this is ironic continues to elude him. 

Still, for the third consecutive day in a row, Maxwell had demanded to use the tent, and Wilson had reluctantly conceded in favor of taking watch. When he’d decided to team up with Maxwell, he hadn’t expected the other man to be such dead weight when it came to helping them survive. 

Wilson’s exhausted. But the truce between them is still fragile, and he was willing to give up some of his comfort if it meant maintaining the delicate trust the former shadow king had placed in him. When he himself had awoken from being bound to the throne, his entire body had ached like he’d been run over, and that had only been after a few days of restraint. He can’t imagine what sort of torment Maxwell must have endured upon his release, the sheer physical misery that would accompany so many years spent imprisoned there. 

So he’d given up the tent. Because, despite everything, Maxwell had suffered, too. Had been bound to the gameboard just as he was, just as all the survivors were. In the end, he was just Their plaything, a king with a paper crown. 

By now, the fire is growing dim once more, and he’s created a divot in the dirt from where he’s been pacing. Wilson gives the fire a few more twigs, glancing at the sky and wishing he could see the moon. It’s new tonight, and even the Constant’s few stars wink out on nights like this. 

The sound of the shadows crescendos alongside the roar of the fire, like an orchestra screaming in his head. It brings a sharp pain to his temples, like his skull is splitting along his browline, down his nose, all the way to his jaw. He clutches at his head, biting back his cry of pain to a hiss that leaves his mouth like a kettle reaching its boiling point. He crumples to his knees, though the feeling disappears just as quickly as it had appeared, leaving him doubled over on the ground with a mild thumping behind his eyes. Drawing a ragged breath, Wilson pulls himself back to his feet. 

His eyes land on the tent again. He tears them away and resumes pacing. 

In the light of day, it’d been easy to convince himself to trust Maxwell. It’d been easy to understand that he was a victim too, that their odds of survival would be better if they worked together, that it would be unreasonable to hold onto a grudge after spending time on the throne himself and seeing the power it held firsthand. But the darkness sweeps that all away somehow, and Wilson keeps glancing fervently at the tent, the shadows whispering that if he’s not careful, he’s going to get backstabbed again. 

He steps around the fire and leans in closer to the tent, close enough that his ear brushes against the fabric. Above it all, the shadows and the whispers and the crackling flames, he can hear Maxwell’s deep, sonorous breathing, rumbling out from the tent as he sleeps. 

It makes Wilson angry. The fact that Maxwell gets to gently slumber and he must sit outside and stoke the fire and listen to the darkness murmur to him. 

The tides of memory rise once more, and he thinks of dying. Like a checklist of the most painful moments in his life, he thinks of being mauled by feral hounds, of being torn apart by tentacles, of being swarmed and stomped and lanced and burned and  _ starved _ , and he knows that even if his body doesn’t carry the scars of his time here, his mind will never heal from them, and somewhere beyond everything there’s a ragtime tune looping again and again, mocking how futile his life has become.

When he blinks, he’s holding his razor. He doesn’t remember grabbing it, but the chest he usually stores it in is flipped open, and he can see his own footsteps in the dirt from where he’d walked over and picked it up. The razor is in his hand even if he doesn’t recall it getting there, and it gleams up at him in the firelight. It’s a dingy, crude sort of thing, with a jagged blade and rough wooden handle. He never comes away from a shave without a nick or two. 

Despite the unevenness, the blade is sharp. Wilson knows it, too. He’d used it to slit his own throat once, during a particularly rough winter. It had seemed the best idea at the time, between the dread of another agonizing death of starvation and the blackened rot of his fingers from frostbite. It’d been quick; he’d barely had a few moments to watch his blood color the snow before he was gone. 

He’s in the tent now. There isn’t much room inside, and he bumps against Maxwell’s long legs as he ducks through the entrance. Somehow, the man doesn’t stir. The tent flap falls closed behind him as he moves farther in, hunching down against the slope of the fabric as he tries to find a decent position in the cramped space.

Most prominently, Wilson takes note that the man’s neck isn’t bared. Maxwell sleeps almost defensively, with his chin tucked down and his arms curled around that strange book he carries everywhere. Even in sleep, his face is stern, mouth sharply downturned and brows furrowed. Wilson sits back on his heels, simply watching for a moment. Maxwell breathes unnaturally slowly, his body going still between each breath. Some side-effect from the throne, most likely. 

Absently, he presses his thumb against the flat of the razor, tightening his grip on the handle. All he’d have to do was reach out, grab hold of Maxwell’s chin, and lift. And then it was simply a matter of getting in a single, clean cut. It would be over in seconds, he’s sure. He imagines digging the blade into the other man’s throat, imagines striking deep enough to scrape the jagged flint edges against his spine. He wonders what sound that would make. 

Darkness seems to curl in from under the edges of the tent, although Wilson can’t tell if it’s the shadows moving in or simply his vision narrowing. He flinches, a sharp pain bursting at his hand and he looks down only to realize that his thumb had slipped over the blade. Blood beads there, sliding down the length of his thumb and pooling into his palm as he lifts his hand to inspect it. Here he was, cutting himself for Maxwell again. He thinks of slicing his palm and spilling his blood on a doorway to hell. 

He adjusts his grip on the razor. It would be so easy, he thinks. One good cut and Maxwell would bleed out right there, all over his newly sewn wool blankets. Wouldn’t even know what was happening before it was too late. It’d be worth it. 

Wilson knows how to do it. His pulse pounds loudly in his ears, the shadows creeping in his periphery, and all he can see is the defenseless man asleep before him and the glint of the razor in the trickling firelight. They invite him forward. 

It would be so  _ easy.  _

Maxwell won’t change. Even if he continues to live, he’ll always be manipulative, always be selfish. And Wilson, as gullible, as trusting, as  _ stupid  _ as he is, will let himself get dragged along and chewed up and spitten out. Just another of the Constant’s trophies, his bones buried and looted and forgotten. 

He’s on his knees, just inches away from Maxwell’s face. He can smell the other man’s breath from here, and in this moment there is nothing else in the entire world besides the two of them and the blade in his hand. 

Wilson hates him. He knows this because the shadows tell him so. They’re saying it now, that Maxwell deserves to die once over for each time Wilson has. That he deserves to die once over for each poor soul he’s dragged here. That he deserves to die for thinking he could be above it all, that he could outsmart Them. 

Wilson blinks. Maxwell’s sleeping face stares back at him. He glances back down to the blade of the razor, to the cut along the roughened skin of his hand. He remembers the look of his blood on the snow. 

Death, like everything else in the Constant, is not permanent. And it is not an escape, despite how greatly Wilson had hoped it would be. He thinks that would be too kind for Maxwell, anyway. Just a way for him to run from the things he’d done. 

His hands shake, and he can’t think of a reason why. He wants to do this, he does, even in futility. Even if his normally steady hands seem to disagree. Where has the surgeon’s precision he so greatly values gone? 

Wilson feels like he can’t breathe. He feels like there’s a hand around his throat, and shakingly, he brings his free hand up to loosen his collar, his eyes kept unmoving on the man before him. The conclusion is simple, really. He can’t use death as a punishment. 

The realization strikes him, and in response, the hum of the shadows grows all-encompassing. Wilson flinches, covering his ears as if to block it out but the sounds only continue. It’s a cacophony, like the scramble of insect legs on concrete, like the buzz of a swarm of cicada wings on a hot summer night. Wilson tumbles to his side, clutching harder at his head, waiting for it to cease. 

It does, after a moment that feels like an eon. He can hear the fire outside, popping sparks as it begins to die down again. A bead of blood rolls from the cut on his thumb, gathering under his nail before dropping to the ground, staining the dirt. Wilson sits back up, pressing down on the wound with his other hand to try and stop the bleeding as he gathers himself and leaves the tent. 

He closes the razor, grinding the blade into the groove of the handle to snap it shut before returning it to its place in the chest. He feeds the fire again with his back turned to the tent, and even now, he can’t shake the feeling that he’s going to get betrayed by leaving himself vulnerable. 

He sits and watches the dance of the flames and tries to recount what he’s just done. 

He could have killed Maxwell, but he didn’t, and he wants to believe that his mercy comes from a place of logic rather than cowardice, but in the end, he’s not sure. Still, once he’d put the razor away, the shadows had seemed to fade somewhat, and the pounding in his head subsided, if only slightly. 

Uneasy and uncertain, Wilson lets the sounds of the Constant wash over him and waits anxiously for morning. 

**Author's Note:**

> [My tumblr](http://yergink.tumblr.com/) for those interested.


End file.
